tetrapylon, Aphrodisias
The site of Aphrodisias in south-central Anatolia (Asian Turkey) was a major cult center of the regional version of Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love and fertility. Around the 3rd century BCE, Aphrodite was merged with the local Great Mother goddess of fertility, worshipped here in the lush Dandalas River Valley for more than 5,000 years before the Greek pantheon settled in. Continue reading
Erg Chebi, Morocco
Mt. Carmel, Israel – photo by Itamar Grinberg, courtesy of the Israel Ministry of Tourism
The highlights of Istanbul for a first-time visitor are:
The Hagia Sophia is a 6th-century Christian basilica, converted to a mosque by the Ottomans. After 85 years as a museum, Hagia Sophia became a working mosque again in 2020. If the word awesome still had meaning, I would use it to describe the Hagia Sophia, temple of Holy Wisdom. It set the standard for Byzantine architecture, though it was 1,000 years before another cathedral surpassed its size. From the outside, it’s a red-orange mountain that seems to anchor the city to the Bosphorus shore. It’s not particularly beautiful but the air of greatness can’t be missed. On the inside, it’s vast and filled with the light of heaven. The massive, superlative dome practically floats above the wide-open enormity below. Interior surfaces are decorated with frescos, mosaics, calligraphy and marble.
Cappadocia
Istanbul
Ephesus
Dalyan
Istanbul
This gorgeous tile work is inside the Topkapi Palace, the residence and governing hub of the Ottoman Empire from the middle 15th century until the Empire’s demise in the early 19th century. The palace sprawls along the waterfront of a peninsula in the heart of the city once known as Constantinople.1924, Topkapi Palace became a museum open to the public and is among the most visited sites in our mystery country.
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Can you name that country?
See below for answers.
Kusadasi
Ephesus
Ephesus
Ephesus
Ephesus
In the ancient Greek world, pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus was among the very first “natural philosophers,” those who sought understanding of the physical world through observation. Before these thinkers, the mechanics of nature were attributed to the actions of the gods.
Heraclitus was a citizen of Ephesus, a Greek city on the Ionian coast, today western Anatolia in Turkey. He was part of a wave of revolutionary thought that rose up out of western Anatolia in the 5th and 6th centuries BCE. Other important thinkers from that time and place include Thales, Anaximander, Anaxagoras and Anaximenes.
All that we know of Heraclitus comes down through later philosophers, including Plato and Aristotle, who referenced and quoted him extensively in their writings. Collections of his ideas are published as “Fragments,” presumably of a more complete body of work, now lost.
Heraclitus believed that the universe and everything in it is in an eternal state of becoming and that change is the only constant. His most famous and emblematic aphorism is that a person can never step into the same river twice, meaning that the person and the river will be different each time they meet.
You cannot step twice into the same rivers; for fresh waters are flowing in upon you. (12)
We step and do not step into the same rivers; we are and are not. (49a)
He understood the universe to be composed of the union of opposites striving for harmony, each reliant on the other for its existence. The interaction of united opposites provides the primary universal order, which Heraclitus called logos and symbolized with fire. In this world, conflict is a natural and essential process to all being and exists on a continuum with reconciliation.
The way up and the way down is one and the same. (60)
In the circumference of a circle the beginning and the end are common. (103)
Men do not know how what is at variance agrees with itself. It is an attunement of opposite tension, like that of the bow and the lyre. (51)
Couples are things whole and not whole, what is drawn together and what is drawn asunder, the harmonious and discordant. The one is made up of all things, and all things issue from the one. (10)
God is day and night, winter and summer, war and peace, surfeit and hunger; but he takes various shapes, just as fire, when it is mingled with spices, is named according to the savour of each. (67)
We must know that war is common to all and strife is justice, and that all things come into being and pass away through strife. (80)
It is sickness that makes health pleasant and good; hunger, satiety; weariness, rest. (111)
Heraclitus expressed little confidence in either the perceptive powers or the intelligence of his fellow humans. While acknowledging that the truth of things was hidden, he despaired that most people were unable to comprehend the truth even when pointed out to them. He is sometimes referred to as the Weeping Philosopher, partly due to his intellectual isolation. As an arrogant misanthrope, he probably didn’t have many friends, which also may have led to some tears.
Nature loves to hide. (123)
Eyes and ears are bad witnesses to men, if they have souls that understand not their language. (107)
The many do not take heed of such things as those they meet with, nor do they mark them when they are taught, though they think they do. (17)
Fools when they do hear are like the deaf; of them, does the saying bear witness that they are absent when present. (34)
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The fragments used in this post are all from the John Burnet translation.
The archaeological site of Troy is located on the western coast of Anatolia, near the convergence of the Aegean Sea and the Dardanelles (ancient Hellespont), the strait that connects the Aegean to the Bosphorus and the Black Sea.
Excavations have revealed 9 main layers of settlement going back 5 thousand years. The Troy immortalized by Homer in the Iliad, which tells the story of the final months of a 10 year siege of Troy by a coalition of Greek states, has been placed in layer VIIa, dated to around 1250 BCE. Scholars generally agree that the Iliad is a fictionalized, mythologized account of an actual conflict, but that the war was most likely over control of the Hellespont and trade access to the Black Sea, rather than the abduction of Helen, the queen of Sparta, as Homer tells it.
Can you name that country?
See below for answers.
Kayseri Sultan Hani is one of many caravanserais in the Cappadocia region of our mystery country. The Silk Road and other well-traveled trade routes connecting Europe, Asia and North Africa were punctuated with these hostels, which provided shelter for trade caravans. At the caravanserai, merchants found shelter, food and supplies for themselves and their animals, as well as a range of services and plenty of opportunities for networking and deal making. The first caravanserais were built in Anatolia (of which Cappadocia is a part) by Seljuk sultans, who ruled from the 10th to the 13th century. Caravanserais were square or rectangular, with fortress-like walls and a single, often elaborate, portal. Inside, chambers and stalls were arranged around a central courtyard, usually with a small mosque in the center.
Can you name that country?
See below for answers.
Cappadocia
Aphrodisias
Pergamum
Suleymaniye Mosque, Istanbul
Ephesus
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